I haven’t decided whether to stick with the factory stereo and iPod adaptor, or put in something aftermarket like the Alpine in GPMINI; so far I’m definitely missing any useful iPod control – the factory system for the R50/R53 is really not very functional! You have to set up playlists called MINI1/MINI2…/MINI5, otherwise you can choose “all tracks” (which is what I’ve done so far, since I haven’t yet set up any MINI-specific playlists). The R56 iPod interface was more useful than that … but at least this older one doesn’t seem to take a minute or more to get ready to play music!
My normal habit would be to choose “random” play and see what comes up – if I like it, I can turn off random play and stick with that artist/album for a while. If I don’t like it, I can ship to the next track (which didn’t work on the R56, but does in the convertible). However, this factory system “forgets” that random is turned on, every time you select a different source (radio, CD) or turn the car off and on again.
So now, it’s switch on the car, and press “RND” every time.
Also of course, there’s no display of track/artist/etc, just a number. And no practical way to select a specific track either – when not in random mode you can -> skip to next track, but pressing that however many hundreds of times to get to a particular artist/album/track would be crazy!
Yes, I can set up the special MINIx playlists, but if you put a reasonable number of tracks in any one playlist, you still wouldn’t want to step through it; and if you make small playlists, you only have five possibilities to choose from!
I tried selecting a track on the iPod before connecting it, pressing PAUSE and then connecting it – didn’t work! The factory interface just did nothing at all (I think it was trying to find “MINI1” playlist); if I pressed “CD6” to select “all music” then it would start from the first artist/album/track and not play from the paused track I’d selected already.
Maybe if I set up “MINI1” playlist to be all tracks … I wonder if that would work then to be able to pause a track and then connect it?
So, I bought an AUX input cable, planning to connect up Sirius. But the AUX input cable isn’t working?! It never shows “AUX” when you step through the different MODEs; I did the “blind” cable install by pulling down the drivers knee bolster, but I’m 99% sure the cables connected OK; I guess I have to disassemble the downtubes and pull out the radio to check for sure.
Meanwhile, a quick question: is there anyone out there with the factory iPod in an R50/53, also with AUX input connected and WORKING?
M&I / GBMINI 